Very nice work on the lorikeets and cockatoos, Max - beautiful birds! I'd love to see those in the wild myself - all the great colorful birds are in the various tropical regions like ours.

MScott, beautiful shot of the hummingbird...and seemingly so rare to catch one sitting still AND so close! Seems they're pretty much always in motion when I see them, and the few times one has sat on a branch it always seems to be 80 feet away from me.

Got off work in 60F weather and went home to unpack new lens (600mm f/4) and grab a picture or two. By the time I got out to the pits 3 miles from town, the weather turned to 25 mph winds and 29F. I still got a few pictures and thought I would post one.

Weather around here has been really bad for wildlife the last couple of days, so I took a drive to see how they are doing. I took about 50 photos and thought I would share this one. Check out the buildup of ice on the vegetation.

And its sad to see you still have snow on the ground as well. 2 days ago we got hit by another small storm with high winds and blowing snow. It was bad enough that they closed the last highway near my home so I had to leave my truck in a small town about 15km from my home and get a friend to take me the rest of the way by snowmobile. Its to the point now around here where all people are doing is joking about it as it is that crazy right now here. Last year at this time we had green grass and the geese were starting to see their young hatch and right now we still have over a meter of snow on the ground. Some farmers are starting to panic as they are running out of hay for their cows and have to have it shipped in now. Most keep enough hay to do them til the end of april for really bad years and even the ones with hay til then say it wont be enough and they will have to bring some in. Still no signs here of any duck or goose activity even though they are starting to stage heavily about 300km south of us. The weekend calls for more snow here.... on the bright side the temps during the day are, for the most part now, hovering around 0 or a bit below so it is warming.

and we are still getting 25C days in April. But that is about to end. Mid to high teens from now on.Its rare for us to get a winters day that doesn`t reach at least 10C at some point during the day and our night time temps only occasionally get down to 0C. What makes it cold here isn`t so much the temperature, but we are exposed to the winds from the Antartica. Its cold winds that are more annoying than a nice still really cold day.

Cold? What's that? I spent the weekend birding in the swamps at 90 degrees and 88% humidity, then in my pool for the rest of the afternoon. Early April, still 'Spring' here - but we're already at pool weather. The water in my pool is 80 degrees...and it's not heated artificially!